Short work genres

[cygnusdei]

Other than Etudes (technical excercise), Scherzi (playful character piece) and Nocturnes (night music) are there common or descriptive features of these other genres, or are they too loose to be defined?

Preludes
Barcarolles
Ballades
Novelettes
Impromptus
Intermezzi
Rhapsodies
Consolations
Moments musicaux

[rachfan]

To your list, you could probably add

Polonaises
Song without Words
Lyric Pieces
Arabesques
Eclogues
Romances
Capriccios
Elergies
Poems
Album Leaves
Invention
Rondos (not part of sonatas)
Toccatas
Reveries

The term "character piece" (the counterpart of an "art song" for voice) is also a common catch-all for pieces that might not fit the other labels.

Some of the genres above can be quite well defined, whereas some others are more generalized.

[cluster]

I think most short genres are nebulous.  They either refer to being small:
     Arietta - Morceau (de Salon) - Albumleaf
or being not very serious:
     Bagatelle (a toy) - Caprice (a whim) - Badinage (a jest) - Scherzo (a skip)
or being an idle thought:
     Meditation - Reverie - Souvenir (a memory) - Moment Musical - Idyll - Pastorale
or being only a part of something bigger:
     Prelude - Intermezzo/Interlude - Envoi

None of these have any formal requirement other than fitting their 'character', and others only have vague forms borrowed from literature like Ballade, Poeme and romance.  But things like barcarolle (boat-song), polonaise (Polish dance) have more of a traditional shape like marches and waltzes. 

I notice the most nebulous forms Fantasy/Fantasia/Fantasie and Rhapsody are hardly ever small. The composer usually seems to get carried away formally and unfortunately technically as well.

[Petter]

How does the term "Album Leaf" refer to something small? Im not native english speaker and not extremely well-versed in music terminology so this expression is very puzzling to me.